On the Hunt (Sentinel Wars #3.5)(59)
Author: Gena Showalter

He was wrong. It changed everything, at least when it came to her plans. As for the two of them . . . she didn’t know. He wanted her, but he also wanted his freedom. And she didn’t know if she could work with that.

"I’m not leaving," she said after a moment. "Not if I can do something to defend the barrier."

Beneath the thrill of the discovery was a thick underlayer of fear that bubbled up at the thought of what they were really talking about here. The end of days. The end of everything. This wasn’t just about the two of them. It couldn’t be. Swallowing to wet a throat gone suddenly dry, she said, "Let me help you."

"Help." He said the word like a prayer, but shook his head. "You don’t get it. There’s nothing you can do to help, and I can’t risk being distracted."

"I can take care of myself," she said, stung. "And what do you mean, there’s nothing I can do?

What about the magic?"

His mouth thinned to a line. "There’s no magic without the Nightkeepers."

She lifted the locket, only then realizing that she had clenched her hand around it in a tight fist.

"But I’m a parrot. This proves it."

"That suggests," he emphasized the distinction, "that you’re descended from the winikin of the parrot bloodline. The winikin weren’t magic users. They were just support staff."

Her pulse hummed in her ears. "What if I’m not a winikin?"

Cold anger flared in his expression. "You’re sure as hell not one of them."

Careful, her gut warned. As far as he was concerned, the Nightkeepers had been another sort of enemy. But she had to know. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. For one, you’re too small. They were . . ." He trailed off, eyes darkening. "Bigger and stronger than normal humans. They were the ultimate warriors—they fought harder and longer, healed faster. You couldn’t take your eyes off them." He shrugged. "They were gods on earth."

Something must have shown on her face, because his expression sharpened suddenly. "Why?"

Heart pounding, she pushed up her right sleeve to show the thin white scar. When his eyes went wide and white rimmed, she nodded. "Yeah. It healed. And you said I came out of the drug sooner than you expected."

"That’s—" He broke off. "There’s another explanation. There has to be."

"That’s not all. You said I shouldn’t be able to do magic? well, I’m pretty sure I already have."

She described how the parrot glyph had disappeared at the temple. She tried not to let it hurt when he stalked away from her to brace his hands on the back of the couch, head hanging as if he didn’t want to look at her. She finished, "There was a little space behind where the glyph had been. In it was a yellow crystal skull."

His head jerked up and his face went gray, practically matching his eyes. "What?"

She had to fight not to back up as he crossed to her and gripped her arms, hard. Instead, she clutched him in return, refusing to back down. "And that’s not all. I think it was magic that pulled me to this region, magic that helped me find the temple. And when we were making love—"

"Where’s the skull?" he interrupted.

"What? It’s safe; don’t worry. It’s in the Jeep lockbox. But why—"

"You left it outside? Gods help us!" He tore away from her and bolted for the mudroom, snapping over his shoulder, "Stay here!"

He slapped off the security panel on the run, grabbed a gun and a long, sheathed knife, and slammed through the door. Seconds later, the motion-activated lights blazed to life as he pelted barefoot across the courtyard.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. The curse hammered with the pounding of JT’s pulse and the thud of his footsteps on the packed dirt as he hurtled through the gate, shotgun first.

He skidded to a halt the second he got a good look at Natalie’s Jeep. "Fuck!"

The vehicle was off-kilter on a shredded tire, the driver’s door hung open on a single hinge, and the interior was ripped to shit, dripped with ichor, and smelled like week-dead cow. The lockbox hung askew, open and empty.

Too late. He was too f**king late. "Son of a bitch!" At the sound of a noise behind him, he spun, but kept his finger off the trigger, knowing damn well who it was. "I told you to stay inside!"

Natalie stood there, staring at the Jeep, stricken.

He was already on the move, taking her arm and hustling her back through the gate. "Come on. We can’t stay out here."

He was headed for the house, but just inside the walled enclosure, she dug in her heels and yanked away. "Wait. Just wait a damned minute!"

Rounding on her, he snapped, "Why? So you can cast a spell on me? What’s it going to be—temporary amnesia? A sleep spell? Why not teleport us straight to wherever they took the damned skull?" He knew he wasn’t being fair, but he’d just started to comprehend the idea of her being a winikin—there was no faking the locket—when things had hung a quick left straight to hell.

She couldn’t be a magic user—she had all the physical hallmarks of winikin ancestry in her dark coloring and eyes, and the Nightkeepers always bred true. No way they would mix their precious blood.

But the evidence was there. He couldn’t deny the scar. And the skull. . . What the hell were they going to do about the skull? More, what was he going to do about her? Whatever her bloodlines, whatever her powers, she didn’t have the right training to stay here and fight. Not to mention that she was reckless, too willing to throw herself headlong into danger.

But he couldn’t just chase her off, not now that she knew that she, too, had a connection to this chunk of godsforsaken forest. And not now that he knew there were more zotz on the loose. The tatter-winged f**kers had somehow trashed the Jeep without tripping the alarms. What else could they do now?

He was all too aware that it was almost dawn. The day of the equinox.

Gods help them.

"Tell me about the skull," she said, pressing. "What can it do?"

Nothing without a Nightkeeper, he thought. But he didn’t say it, because suddenly that didn’t seem as clear-cut as it had minutes earlier.

"When the Nightkeepers’ long-ago ancestors used the barrier to trap the demons in the underworld, they created thirteen life-size crystal skulls that together balanced the energy flow across the planes. They hid four of them on earth, sent four to the underworld, and sacrificed four to the sky gods. They kept the last one, and used magic to divide it into thirteen smaller replicas.

One was given to a female seer in each of the major bloodlines. They became the itza’at seers.